Britain's film censors yesterday launched a high court battle to ban the sale of explicit hardcore videos in licensed sex shops.
In a test case that could clarify whether or not videos featuring shots of sexual penetration are legal in Britain, as they are in many other parts of Europe, the British Board of Film Classification yesterday argued that such videos should remain banned until more is known about the possible harm caused to children who might watch them.
The case centres on a decision by the independent Video Appeals Committee to overturn the BBFC's refusal to give a special R18 certificate to seven "hardcore" videos produced by two firms, Sheptonhurst, and Prime Time (Shifnal), for restricted sale in 80 licensed sex shops in Britain.
Behind the case lies the home secretary's decision, two years ago, to clamp down on the production of hardcore pornographic videos after the discovery that the BBFC ,under its previous president, Lord Birkett, had started to license "stronger" videos for sex shops to try to put the cowboys of the trade out of business.
But after Mr Straw appointed Andreas Whittam Smith as president of the BBFC, the board changed its policy and refused to license the seven videos - called Horny Catbabe, Nympho Nurse Nancy, TV Sex, Office Tart, Carnival International Version (Trailer), Wet Nurses 2 Continental Version, and Miss Nude International Continental Version - unless "all shots of penetration by penis, hand or dildo as well as shots of a penis being masturbated or taken into a woman's mouth" were removed.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC, for the BBFC, argued in the high court in London yesterday that the decision by the Video Appeals Committee should be quashed as it had wrongly interpreted the law and had failed to take into account the risk of "real and significant harm" to children if the videos were sold for home viewing.
He said the videos comprised "a seemingly endless sequence of energetic, joyless sex which appears consensual but in which there is no pleasure expressed except the occasional feral grunt" and added that their general effect was dehumanising and mechanistic. Lord Lester told Mr Justice Hooper that unless the committee's decision were quashed all hardcore videos would have to be given a certificate unless they were criminally obscene or it could be shown they did cause "devastating harm to more than a minority of children and young people".
Lord Lester argued that the Video Recordings Act 1984, introduced to ban "video nasties", said it was accepted that some videos would be watched by children and that it was better not to run the risk of causing real and significant harm until more was known.
But David Pannick QC, for Sheptonhurst, argued that the committee panel, which had been chaired by a former deputy director of public prosecutions, John Wood, had been acting legally, that the videos involved were, by the standards of the industry, not "hardcore" but "mediumcore", and that the risk of their being seen and causing harm to children was "insignificant".
Mr Pannick said the child psychiatrist Gordana Milavic, who gave evidence on behalf of the BBFC, had seen during 19 years of treating children fewer than six cases where there was a direct link to pornography. He said the committee had also found that while there was much evidence of the impact of violent images on children, there was no systematic evidence or concern from psychiatrists about the impact of pornography on children. The case had to be judged in the modern world where any reasonably intelligent 11-year-old knew how to obtain graphic material from the internet.
